Polar – No Cure, No Saviours (Prosthetic)

Friday, 10th June 2016 By David E. Gehlke

Rating: 8/10

Sure, we can throw down with something like this. Polar, a metallic hardcore combo from the UK, are one of the few bands of this ilk who can take the edges and angles off the hardcore sound (read: they largely keep out of beatdown territory, avoid annoying clean vocals, et al), all for the sake of unbridled heaviness. And their second full-length, No Cure, No Saviours, certainly has ample girth. Coupled with a concept rooted in humanity (homelessness), Polar provide an album’s worth of emotive, fist-to-the-face-with-thought tunes.

We’ll point immediately to vocalist Adam “Woody” Woodford as being the main protagonist, if you will, here. He has the appropriate shard’d vocal approach down to a quasi-science, especially when he flies into a rage on opener “Blood for Blood.” A teaming, if not heaving cut (there’s our rhyme scheme for ya), “Blood for Blood” boasts not only Woodford’s vocal exhortations, it also moves into one of the year’s most heavy mosh parts. (For the record, it would be perfectly suitable for the pseudo ninjas to do their thing here; same with regular ‘ole metal dudes.) And down the line, Polar works in a steady diet of post-hardcore body blows (“King of Kings”), shout-alongs (“Tidal Waves and Hurricanes”) and pure aggro motifs (“Cold Dark Nothing,” “No Saviour”).

Mad props to Polar for organizing a series of shows around the release of No Cure, No Saviours to raise awareness on the issue of homelessness. It’s these sort of deeds that give the band instant credibility, which would happen whether they were doing such shows or not. In the end, Polar is a metallic hardcore act we all can get behind…something not uttered too often in these quarters.